Depletion surprises

I got some orthotics this week. The directions say that you need to taper into their use, start with an hour and add an hour each day (the way bifocals, pre-progressive lenses, used to be worked into your life). My chiropractor, who prescribed and fitted them, said she hated hers for two weeks, and then she loved them.

I loved mine immediately. Sure, I felt like I was on stilts, but they changed the way I hold my pelvis, and it's impossible to stand or walk pre-crumpled (how I've been making my way through life the last few, oh, months, let's say). Vast improvement. Immediate happiness.

Except muscles that I have been mistreating for months are now getting exercised. So I'm tired in new ways.

Before I was gifted with The Disease, I would find myself tired by a long, full day. Now I find myself completely exhausted by half a day. Or an hour. Or a single class period. Fortunately, although I frequently find my students intensely tiring, even the most taxing class I do not find tiresome, and no matter what happens we often find reasons to smile or laugh (even when people are behaving a little... excessively, let's call it).

Time was when a Starbuck's green tea latte would perk me right up. Today, I found my beloved green-tea latte actually rather toxic. Oh well, that'll be the last one of those, I guess. (I'm getting very, very tired of the phrase "I guess that'll be the last one of those"...) I have considerably higher-quality matcha powder at home, I'll try that before I completely give up my green-tea-pick-me-up. But the green tea did keep me out of the nadir of the energy slump, and if that's gone... well, it's gonna be rough.

I got invited earlier this month to play an organ concert on the East Coast, some time later this spring. I'm gonna have to write them and say thanks but no thanks; basically, my organ-pedal playing is no longer concert grade, thank you very much, MS. Services, I can do, but concerts... I'm definitely sure that's a "no," at least right now. I'm not sure how I feel about that... I don't know whether I'm OK with it, or numb. Whether I've accepted the impairment or I'm in denial about my own feelings toward it. Although many things are possible, there's no reason that I have to think that It (whatever It is) Is Over, because after all, the one thing that's constant about the MS journey is change.

But one thing is for sure: "Certainty" is not one of the gifts of MS.